These colorful Easter Sugar Cookies roll out mess-free and require no fancy icing decorations. Just happy, buttery deliciousness.
Place eggs, egg yolks, and sugar into a medium saucepan. Turn heat to medium and whisk well to combine. Stir in salt, lemon zest, lemon juice, and butter. Continue mixing continuously until mixture becomes creamy and thick, about 5 minutes. Be careful not to overcook.
Remove from heat and strain curd through fine mesh strainer, stirring and pressing the curd with a spatula to help it through.
Store in refrigerator for up to 5 days until ready to use.
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
Using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add egg, milk, vanilla extract, and almond extract. Keep mixing just until well combined.
Decrease mixer speed to low and gradually add in flour mixture. Let the dough stand at room temperature for about 5 minutes, until slightly firmed up.
Divide dough in half. Add desired gel colors to dough. Flatten each piece using your hands into roughly a 1/2 thick inch rectangle. Place a long piece of plastic wrap on countertop and place dough on it. Place a piece of wax paper (about the same length as the plastic wrap) on top of dough. Using a rolling pin, roll out to 1/8 inch thick (or thicker if desired). Place rolled out dough onto a baking sheet and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or 15 minutes in the freezer. At this point, you can leave the dough in the refrigerator overnight if you wish.
To make striped cookies, remove wax paper and cut thin strips of dough in different colors (between 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch wide) using pizza cutter or small sharp knife. Place strips directly next to each other in alternating colors. If dough becomes warm and hard to handle, place back in freezer for a few minutes. Place wax paper over striped dough pattern and roll top very lightly with rolling pin just to make colors join slightly. Refrigerate dough again for at least 15 minutes before cutting out with cookie cutters.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cut out shapes from chilled dough. If filling cookies with lemon curd later, remember to cut two identical shapes for each filled cookie to use as cookie top and bottom. Bake for 8-11 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through to ensure even baking. Transfer baking sheet to wire rack and let stand until cookies firm up slightly, about 5 minutes. Remove cookies from baking sheet and allow to continue cooling to room temperature on wire racks.
Fill cookies with lemon curd, if desired.
Store baked cookies at room temperature in an airtight container for up to one week.
Store leftover unbaked cookie dough by shaping into a disk and wrapping well with plastic wrap and placing into a plastic freezer bag. Dough may be frozen for up to 2 months.